Beer news in nyc

From January, 2014

Jimmy’s No 43 will be hosting a super bowl party this Sunday at 6 p.m. with four courses paired up with the bar’s solid beer selection. The bar, which normally is devoid of screens will be bringing in a TV so you can watch the game while enjoying your meal. Here is the menu: Duck Confit Nachos Market Salad Mojito Pork Roast with Salsa Verde, Rice and Black Beans Chile-Chocolate Tart With a reservation (made by emailing foodkarma@gmail.com) the menu is available for a prix fixe price of $25 per person. Without a reservation the menu is available a la…

James Sykes, Matthew McGinley and Patrick Morse have all been working in the beer industry for a while now. Sykes was a beer salesman for Phoenix Beverages, and McGinley was a brand manager for Guinness and before that a manager at Phoenix Beverages. Morse brewed at Harpoon, Eagle Rock Brewery and KelSo of Brooklyn. Now the three are starting their own brewery, Flagship Brewing Company, in Staten Island. BeerUnion reached out to Sykes to chat about Flagship, and bringing brewing back to Staten Island after 50 years. How did you get into brewing? I started home brewing in college and…

Brian Hoffman has been a tour guide for Urban Oyster since 2009. “I was interested in becoming a tour guide because I’m an actor, which means I’d been waiting tables for the last 10 years in New York. A friend of mine was a tour guide and it sounded like something I’d want to do,” he recalls. While he was in the process of getting his tour guide license, Hoffman went to a screening of a beer web series, and just happened to sit next to Cindy VandenBosch, who had just founded neighborhood tour company Urban Oyster with David Naczycz. Having been with the company since…

NYC Beer Week – also known as the Best Week of the Year – is almost here. Below is a roundup of some of the most awesome events during the week, which runs from February 21 to March 2. NYC Beer Week is held annually by the New York City Brewers Guild, a group of brewers whose mission is “to advocate for and promote awareness of its local brewing members; to increase the visibility of local beers through programs, events, and consumer education; and to foster a healthy, ethical and growth-focused craft beer industry throughout the city.” Its members include…

Alex Pappas has been a tour guide for over five years, but with Urban Oyster for a little more than a year. He was inspired by several friends who encouraged him to look into becoming a tour guide. “So i did and eventually i realized that it kind of involved kind of the same things that i already liked… I’m one of those people who lives in New York and also loves living in New York – which i know is not the case for everyone – but I also showing people my city and talking about them and telling…

Before founding Urban Oyster in 2009, David Naczycz was a licensed tour guide, giving bike tours of Central Lark and some food walking tours of the West Village. Now after building Urban Oyster into a successful neighborhood tour company, Naczycz has given all the tours that they offer. “I cover a lot of private tours and I cover tours when people are on vacation. Our newest tours, I always do the lions share of those until we get enough guides trained for them.” But what’s his favorite? “That’s like picking my favorite child,” he laughs. Then he concedes, “my favorite…

The Brooklyn Brewery will start releasing special brews that normally would have stayed in the brewery’s private stash referred to as Ghost Bottles. The first release will be for Wild Streak at 11 a.m., Sunday, January 26 at Brooklyn Brewery. The brewery is calling the series the Brooklyn Quarterly Experiment (BQE) so you can expect four such releases a year. A $30 ticket includes a bottle of Wild Streak, Coffee from Brooklyn Roasting Company, doughnuts from Dough, and a beer token. Additional bottles will be on sale for $20.

The recent brewery surge in NYC is extending to the Bronx, where Gun Hill Brewery looks like it will be the first to open a physical location in the northernmost borough since Rheingold left in the 1960s (the Bronx Brewery started contract brewing in 2011 and expects to open a brewery in the Bronx this year as well). Gun Hill is founded by Dave Lopez and Kieran Farrel. Chris Sheehan, formerly the head brewer at Manhattan’s Chelsea Brewing Company, is the brewmaster. BeerUnion got in touch with Lopez to see how things are going and what the new brewery’s focus…

Finback Brewery will join the growing ranks of brewers in Queens this month when its beers start hitting taps around the city. The brainchild of homebrewers and friends Basil Lee and Kevin Stafford, Finback is located in Forest Hills, Queens, and will soon have a taproom open to the public. In the meantime the duo will hold launch events to celebrate the release of their beers at Owl Farm on Wednesday, January 22 at 7 p.m.; Jimmy’s No. 43 on Thursday, January 23 at 6 p.m.; and Station House Forest Hills on Tuesday, January 28 at 7 p.m. Lee and Stafford met during school in Boston…

At one time, Brooklyn was home to 45 breweries. By the 1970s, all of them had closed. But the vestiges of them still remain. Including lagering tunnels. In Crown Heights, 1860s era lagering tunnels of the old Nassau Brewery have been uncovered. And on March 1, you can visit those tunnels, becoming some of the first people to do so in a century. Local beer writer and author of the recently released The Complete Beer Course Joshua M. Bernstein will hold a subterranean event. It will feature a range of lagers from Brooklyn Brewery, KelSo, SingleCut Beersmiths, homebrew shop Bitter…